AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series GPUs
If you haven’t already, read our re-cap and analysis on RDNA technology architecture here that was revealed at COMPUTEX.
AMD’s next announcement was finally here, now it is time to learn about the new GPUs based on NAVI. This is the AMD Radeon 5700 Series GPUs. These GPUs are built for the future of gaming, based on the new 7nm RDNA architecture with faster clock speeds, lower power, PCIe 4.0. The RDNA architecture has a new compute unit design, multilevel cache hierarchy and streamlined graphics pipeline. AMD quotes a 1.25x performance per-clock improvement and 1.5x performance per-watt improvement.
Radeon RX 5700 XT
The first product announced is the Radeon RX 5700 XT video card. This will have 40 Compute Units, up to 9.75 TFLOPs of performance, 8GB of GDDR6 and will be clocked at a Base Clock of 1605MHz but have a Game Clock of 1755MHz and a Boost Clock of 1905MHz. This three-tier clock speed rating was introduced with the Radeon VII. AMD claims that the Game Clock is what you’ll see in games and that the Boost Clock is what the GPU is capable of in certain specific workload scenarios. The TDP for the video card was not revealed. It will be 7nm, RDNA architecture based and have PCIe 4.0 support. Pricing will be $449.
Comparing to Vega
If we look back to AMD Radeon RX Vega pricing at launch, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 launched at $399 and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 launched at $499. That means the new Radeon RX 5700 XT slots right in-between Vega 56 and Vega 64 on pricing.
In terms of specifications however, it has less Compute Units (40) versus the 56 on Vega 56 and 64 on Vega 64. Of course, Radeon RX 5700 XT is based on RDNA, a new architecture, so you cannot compare CU performance on a 1:1 ratio. The clock speed of Radeon RX 5700 XT is also a lot faster than Vega 56 or Vega 64. The memory capacity is the same, but the bandwidth is unknown as we do not yet know the memory clock speed. We also do not know the TDP and how power will compare.
Comparing to RTX 2070
We do know this though, AMD is pitting the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT up against NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2070 on performance, stating it should be faster than a RTX 2070. The MSRP at launch on a non-Founders Edition GeForce RTX 2070 was $499. The Founders Edition was $599. Therefore, the new AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT does come in at a lower MSRP than GeForce RTX 2070 did. If you compare it to the Founders Edition the MSRP is a lot lower on AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, by $150, which is rather significant. Even if you compare it to just the regular RTX 2070 that’s still an official MSRP savings of $50.
In past testing we know that AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 competed with GeForce GTX 1080 dead-on. If AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is at least as fast as Radeon RX Vega 64 then it should provide GTX 1080 level performance, and could beat out RTX 2070 performance. However, it doesn’t quite sound like it will be up the task to tackle RTX 2080 performance. That will still be left to the Radeon VII to handle. At the very least the Radeon RX 5700 XT might be a Vega 64 replacement.
Some Performance
AMD presented a benchmark result in a game called World War Z where the Radeon RX 5700 XT was 15% faster than the GeForce RTX 2070 at 1440p. Another slide showed performance that was really all over the place, some results were good against RTX 2070, but otherwise there were some games that were dead even. Performance this round may vary greatly on the game being used.
The Radeon RX 5700 XT will use a new cooling shroud built to be cool and quiet. It will have the ability to overclock and will use a 1×8 pin and 1×6 pin power connector. It has a vapor chamber cooler setup and a 7-phase power phase system.